Work... a four letter word....

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

like fuck, shit, work is just another 4 letter word…

as I am on day 4 of 8 straight days of work, I truly think of work as a
4 letter word…and as human beings we do work for much of our existence,
and yet, we rarely if ever, actually think about work and why we work…

so think about it… what is the point of work?

most people will say it puts food on the table… but frankly doesn’t
that make us, animals… who go out and gather up the food they need to
put on their “table”… if that is the point of work, then we are no
better then animals…

for I thought that we are “better” then animals and yet, we engage in
such animal behavior as going out and getting our food every day…

if one answers, we work to build better lives for ourselves, then we have
even bigger problems… for that assumption is that the “toys” we collect,
such as big screen TV’s and nice new cars and couches, are making our lives
“better”…and I for one, don’t see how buying new cars or getting a new couch
makes our lives better…

for the assumption here is that somehow, and it isn’t explained how, but somehow
our lives needs and requires material goods to have our lives be “better”…
and yet, there is no facts or evidence that such materials goods as
cars, TV’s and couches makes our lives “better”…

for what it comes down to is a understanding of what is the point of human existence?

and I know people who would happily give everything they own away if it lead to
such unmaterialistic things as love, peace, hope, justice, for themselves and
for the world…

I hold that it is these values and not materialistic things that gives
our lives meaning… if this is so, then why do we waste decades of
our lives working? If the search of human beings is to discover the values
by which they live their lives, then work become something pretty unimportant…
it basically waste our lives… what does it matter if we live in caves, or huts
or shacks if, if we are engaged in the values of existence that makes
life worth living…love… peace… justice… hope… and there are
literally thousands of possible values we can engage with as human beings…
while how many cars can we really own? or how many big screen TV’s sets
can we really have? given our houses, who really needs more then one couch?
in my house, that is all the room we have… for just one couch… and I like my couch,
don’t get me wrong, but is my existence dictated by having that one couch?

another aspect of existence is this concept of being a consumer, a worker,
and a producer… we are trained since childhood and even in collage/university
to be one of three things, a consumer, a producer or a worker…
the entire point of the capitalistic system is to either produce things, consume
things or to be a worker… and we all, all of us, are consumers… we buy that
couch or that car or the food we eat… thus we all fulfill one aspect of
the modern world…we are consumers… but are we all producers?

let us look at my shitty job…
I am a checker in a supermarket… I don’t produce a thing… I scan
items and weigh produce and punch in a 4 digit code… thus garlic is
4608 and organic garlic is 94608…and that is my job…
if monkeys can be taught to count out change, I am out of a job…

I spend my days, including later tonight, scanning items…
I don’t produce a thing… I am nothing better then a middleman,
between a consumer and a producer…hence I am a worker…
I, like millions of other people, I don’t consume or produce anything
at my job…and I ask you, where is this dignity that one is supposed
to have when working? my job is nothing more then mindless activity
that makes the corporation I work for, profits… I don’t actually benefit
from my job because I am so badly paid…and I am one of the higher
paid employees in the store… per hour… (they pay checkers more
to prevent them from cheating or stealing from the company)
the average pay in my store is probably around $18 bucks an hour…
(which frankly in the Bay area is nothing… not when apartments are
$1,900 for a studio and $2,200 for a one bedroom)

and what of their jobs? we have people who clean the store
and people who stock the shelves and others who make
sandwiches…and they work harder then I do and make less money then I do…

what is the dignity of their work? in other words, the idea of work having
value or dignity is something that corporations use to hide the stench of
the mindless and dehumanizing nature of work…
there is no dignity or any value in work…it is a mindless activity
that devalues and dehumanizes us as human beings…

thus as I have said before, partly why I object to communism in which the
worker is glorified but in reality work is just another four letter word…

until we drop this idea that work is an essential aspect of the human condition,
we cannot escape its devaluing effects on us…

work can only be a positive thing once it advances what it means to be human…
instead of what it is today, which is devalue and dehumanize us…

so in work we can be/do only three things, we can consume, we can
produce or we can engage in activity, like my work…

so once we understand work in a fourth way or even a fifth way,
we can value work as something worth a real engagement with,
not just the crap, another 4 letter word, we spend wasting
our lives with…

Kropotkin

2

peter this is america. its your patriotic duty to suffer in order to make the rich richer. thats kind of how this all works.

3

K: and if this is true, and I believe it is, then what’s in it for me?
what is my incentive to work? why waste 40 plus years of my life working if
all I am doing is making the rich richer?

Kropotkin

4

this is where the religion stuff comes in.

all religions are essentially the same.

give up something tangible, now, and later on when you die you get something intangible that’s better.

you in?

5

You work to pay taxes, pay for health insurance, and pay for your meds. Don’t forget to give 10% to the church, and make sure you drop some cash in the bucket with the guy ringing the bell. There’s a shortage this year, so prices are double, for half the quantity.

It sounds like you are a disgruntled slave. Be happy you have roads to drive on, and the freedom to…well just freedom.

“In God we trust, all others pay cash.”

6

Well keter it isn’t physically or logically impossible that a radically new and different kind of system be designed in which everyone labors less while levels of personal wealth and property steadily increase for everyone as a direct result coughmarxcough.

What with modern tech reducing the need for human manual labor, you can subtract a few more hours from the work week and get it down to only a few hours cuz the machines’ll be doing everything, ya know?

Imagine being able to spend five or more hours of every day at the public amusement metroplex if you wanted. You’d be working maybe fifteen hours a week dude cough marxcough.

7

promethean75: Well keter it isn’t physically or logically impossible that a radically new and different kind of system be designed in which everyone labors less while levels of personal wealth and property steadily increase for everyone as a direct result coughmarxcough.

K: that is my point… why does existence require us to increase our levels “levels of
personal wealth and property steadily increase for everyone?”

I question that basic premise that existence is about increasing our personal and collective
wealth… because if that is the point of existence, then there is not point in pursuing
love or peace or justice or hope… those values go by the wayside… and yet, I hold
that those values are really what existence is all about, not the pursuit of personal
or collective wealth…as I have stated, more then once, I disagree with Marx on
several fronts and this is one of them… that the highest engagement of being human
is to work…"

P: What with modern tech reducing the need for human manual labor, you can subtract a few more hours from the work week and get it down to only a few hours cuz the machines’ll be doing everything, ya know?
Imagine being able to spend five or more hours of every day at the public amusement metroplex if you wanted. You’d be working maybe fifteen hours a week dude cough marxcough.
[/quote]
K: I would also disagree with the point of existence spending “5 or more hours at the
public amusement metroplex” that has no more value for me then spending my time
making the “rich get richer”

there is a third alternative, we just need enough imagination to find it…

Kropotkin

8

I used to imagine it alongside John Lennon look what happened to him at a building called Dakota, condos going for millions, back then.

But then he used to synch with the New Left commune mentality, and that flopped because if Charlie Manson, disgruntled would have been rick star.

Incidentally a big hit during that time went:

“You don’t have to be a star to be in my show.”

And communism flopped, national socialism, sandwitched in between was a huge messy disaster.

So what else can anyone come up with?
Slavery, colonialism, been there dine that.

Become a bongo playing guitar man beatnick?

Done that too.

Or seek the backwoods or a mosquito island retire with family and live on 2,000 dollars a month, but need to learn Spanish, for most if those.

Give up and do the right think and keep saying : ok ok ok ok after breathing into a shopping bag that can serve as a hide and seek hat afterwards?
,

9

No! Just musing. Let me tell you Peter, what worked for me.

To escape this soulless air conditioned nightmare, been stuck for so many years, just using my imagination and dry ti look for some routine change, without click watching, not get psyched out by uncool people, try to mask my loneliness by grooving into cool bounderies of willing engaging people, and making Monday into like friday’s mindset, while trying to apply philosophy to sensible life, and going home and having some very worn out family ties with mu cool family and what’s left of them
Trying not to worry too much about bills, the next 60 miles over the oil change limit or what’s that clang maybe the valves are dried up.

Or the little dog needs to go to the vet.

But it’s still better here then it was in the worker’s paradise, of which I could write horror stories of stark social realism

10

I believe in internal work.
Working on learning, pondering, strengthening the consciousness and inner energies.

Some people don’t believe in spirituality at all.
They just want to make money.
I consider this deranged.

11

To me, coming from you, friend is a four letter word.

12

might be too many letters there i cant be sure

13

End is the only part of the word that I heard. Call me morbid or absurd.

14

K: even basic counting skills are beyond you…
friend…f 1. r 2. i 3. e 4. n 5. d 6…

yep, friend has 6 letters… not four…and that is just
another reason we shouldn’t take you seriously at all…

Kropotkin

15

You know what’s a four letter word, Kropotkin?

Love.

16

When I go fishing for the word, I keep wishing you would say to me “I’m really only praying that the words you’ll soon be saying might betray the way you feel about me.”

17

Please read my poem “Work Sucks”. In Creative Writing under the title “Where is my poem?” Its ideas fit this thread.

18

K: love, all you know of love is what a dictionary told you…

Kropotkin

19

There is certainly honor in work. Humility might be needed at your job Mr. Kropotkin but nonetheless, how do you possibly survive living in the bay area working as a cashier? I would like to understand that better.

In any case, back to honor in work. Sure, your job is low pay because it requires low skills. You have chosen to work there, surely. You have chosen to have material things. You have chosen not to live in a shack or a tent. You surely do not want to live in one of those things and not work, correct? Yes Material things make our lives easier. Yes, having a couch makes my life easier. Its something to relax on and watch TV, or perhaps take a nap on. If I didn’t use it I wouldn’t want one. I find couches useful, among most other material things I have worked for.

But I would not want to not work every day. You can lose sight of the sacrifice for the reward which, humanity, is very much like a worker bee so to speak. In most of us, humans have a drive to work and if we don’t we may become depressed. The type of work, whether its producing or not, depends on what you want to do and also what you are capable of doing. So, it seems you don’t like your job. Why not try to get another one? Why don’t you have skills to get another one? If you don’t, then perhaps you may be doomed to working long hours many days in a row at a low skill job in which your work can be replaced very easily by a self checkout line, typically… these days at least. So you’re doing something to get money because food doesn’t grow on trees… Well, it does, but you surely don’t have enough trees to grow your own food… or buy a plot of land or pay your electricity bills to power the internet you surely have access to.

Now, I would wonder… does that change your perspective?

20

K: I have laid out my reasons in other post, but a refresher may be in order…

my goal, my only goal in life these days is to retire… I am 62… I have, as any
62 year old will have, medical needs and thus need a job with benefits…
the only real way I can retire is to sell the condo… and then what?
see that is the rub… yes, I could then retire, but I would have to move elsewhere,
and frankly, I don’t want to… I like the bay area… I have lived in the mid-west and
the south, and have no interest living there and being long time married, 25 years,
any decision is a joint decision… and as far as being able to live in the bay area,
on a retail pay, jointly we make a middle class salary… which around here means,
we make over 60,000 a year… but again, bay area… that isn’t much… for example,
I have never bought a new car… I have driven used cars all my life… and still do…

but my life isn’t really a test case… I use it to make an example of those millions
who lack the benefits I and my wife have…we are, pretty well off, all things considered…
and how I arrived in my current job was circumstances… back in 2007, after being off
for two years because of spinal surgery, I couldn’t find a job to save my fucking life…
this company was the only place, the only one that even considered me…
so I began work… took a sizable pay cut to work there too…now because of
my medical history and my age, I can’t find another job…even in this market…
so, I work out my days until I can retire… sometime around 90, I think…

but my sad and pathetic story isn’t the point, what is the point is that
millions of people are being used and abused in the capitalistic system…
and the first step to change, any change is to recognized that change is needed…
and that is what I am doing… pointing out the need for change… widespread
societal change that no longer used people, uses them as a means to an end…
where people are simple cannon fodder to make big business profits…
that must end and that is what I am trying to bring about… first the notice
that the system is fucked up and then attempt to bring about actual change
itself…

will I succeed? no… frankly not in my lifetime will people even begin the task
of noticing that the system needs and must be changed…
but I hope that someday, people will become aware of the shitshow that
we live in and will try to change the system… I am not naive enough to
think my mission will succeed anytime soon or at all…

I just do what I can and hope for the best…

Kropotkin